Of course anti-semitism is racism. It's just that racism against Jews has acquired a term of its own, probably because discriminating them has been so prominent historically.

Where it gets tricky is when anti-Israel or anti-Zionist statements are equated with anti-semitism; of course some anti-Israel/anti-Zionist people are also anti-semitists/racists, but many of them aren't. But your case is pretty obviously racist because the target is Jews as a whole, not Israeli politics or anything.

so like, on a pitchfork scale of 0.0 to 10.0, where 10.0 is a lynching, and 0.0 is Martin Luther King Jr. enjoying a cup of coffee while making breakfast, in his pajamas, humming a soft song to himself, where would the MacBook Pro thing fall? where does this comment fall?

I think this thread, while started with the noblest of intentions, has been a failure. And the reason I believe it has failed is that we (as a society) are so resigned to simply declaring something racist or not, as if it's binary, instead of attempting to quantify exactly how racist something really is, using numerical scales.

Exactly, this thread isn't about being outraged at these things, it's about discussing them, and learning from them, and analyzing peoples motivations, gaining valuable insight into contemporary race relations, and proposing solutions for a more equitable society. Which is why it is essentially ineffectual, and why we should focus on merely assigning submitted material a score.

For the past couple of weeks, one of my facebook friends (a high school buddy's spouse) has been posting up updates or comments like "they're not racist, they're just BAD POLICE. there are white police shooting black kids, black police shooting black kids, black police shooting white kids. why does everybody have to keep bringing race into this?" I've been biting my tongue pretty hard because she's my friends wife and like, I'm going to be charitable and imagine they are in disagreement about this already and hopefully having fights at home about it, but holy fuck.

While there is no application process — the Dogwood Ball is by invitation only — there are at least three criteria young women must meet to be considered: they must be sophomores in college and unmarried. They also must be white. Trent said she does not see a problem with the event being segregated.

“I think it’s beautiful that (the local AKA chapter) has started their own for their girls,” she says.

I mean, yeah, talk about a word with a historically racist connotation, but on the other hand it's generic enough where I'll take it over anything named after Jefferson Davis or Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.

Although if you had followed my link you would have seen it was California (hee hee). I didn't want to call out Riverside county because it gets tarred with the "white trash" moniker too much. For locals, this is off the 10 between Redlands and Beaumont.